Walgreens has been improperly collecting Cook County’s new sweetened beverage tax on unsweetened drinks, according to a class action lawsuit filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court.

Vince De Leon, a northwest suburban Schaumburg resident, filed the two-count suit on behalf of himself and anyone who has paid the new tax on an unsweetened drink at a Walgreens location. It alleges that Walgreens violated the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act and was unjustly enriched by collecting the taxes.

The Sweetened Beverage Tax Ordinance went into effect on Aug. 2 and adds an extra penny-per-ounce tax to sugar-sweetened beverages, including everything from sodas to sweetened iced teas. The tax does not apply to unsweetened drinks such as bottled water, 100% juice and sparkling water.

Two of the Chicago area’s biggest corporate names are being sued over allegedly bungling the rollout of Cook County’s new penny-per-ounce sweetened beverage tax, with Walgreens accused of taxing unsweetened beverages and McDonald’s accused of essentially taxing the tax.

Two of the Chicago area’s biggest corporate names are being sued over allegedly bungling the rollout of Cook County’s new penny-per-ounce sweetened beverage tax, with Walgreens accused of taxing unsweetened beverages and McDonald’s accused of essentially taxing the tax.

Both of these lawsuits are seeking class action status.

I wonder what the courts will do with these short-lived operational screw-ups.

THERABBLE IS ROUSED

Preckwinkle comments:

Unsweetened sparkling water, like LaCroix, is NOT subject to the sweetened beverage tax. Don’t believe otherwise.

CHICAGO — Tanya Triche Dawood, general counsel for the Illinois Retail Merchants Association (IRMA), frets that the new, penny-per-ounce sweetened beverage tax in Cook County couldn’t have come at a worse time.

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Dawood said she already knows restaurants that have stopped selling fountain drinks from behind the counter and others that have ceased offering free refills since the tax officially went into effect on August 2.

“Many of them can’t afford to eat this tax,” she said. “And in a lot instances, the process of trying to figure out how to collect on the new tax just becomes too complicated.”

IRMA appealed a lower court’s July 28 ruling to shoot down its request to stop the tax from taking effect, but that appeal has also been denied.

Dawood said retailers are expected to solve the added riddle of how they are suppose to collect the tax when customers make purchases with cards issued under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which are exempted by federal rules from sales and other local taxes.

“Retailers are being left to figure out how to get reimbursed, and it will cost them even more money as they’re forced to purchase new software to track purchases,” she said. “It’s a lot of money to have to spend just to be able to collect.”

While county officials have insisted that their primary motivation for enacting the tax is improving public health, several media outlets have reported the new legislation will raise as much as $200 million in added annual revenue.

Again, let’s see what actually gets collected.

If everybody just stops selling soda, then moral victory!

But I bet even if all the soda in the world disappeared, people would still be fat. (Says the non-soda-drinking fattie.)